Socialist Worker 505

www.socialist.ca

no. 505 14 April 2009

Real jobless rate approaches 12 per cent

unite and fight to save jobs

a radical history of may day Pages 6-7 Resist attacks on First Nations

Page 2 Michelle Robidoux covers Shawn Brant’s fight against CN

Women’s rights under attack in Afghanistan

Page 2 Bradley Hughes on the repressive new family law

NATO falters on Afghan mission by p.r. wright According to Statistics Canada, 61,000 jobs were lost in March.

That follows 129,000 job losses in January, and 82,600 in February.

Since October 2008, Canada has lost a whopping 357,000 jobs, and official unemployment increased by over 2 percentage points to 8 per cent—the fastest pace of job loss since World War II. By contrast, during the first five months of the 1982 recession (then the worst recession since WWII) the pace of job loss was less than one per cent.

But the picture is actually worse still. According to the Canadian

Labour Congress (CLC), if unemployment numbers included workers who have dropped out of the workforce, who are waiting to be recalled, and who have involuntarily moved to part-time work, the real unemployment rate in Canada would be 11.7 per cent.

Of the 357,000 jobs lost since October, nearly half of them were lost in Ontario. But job loss is now sweeping western provinces as well. The March figures showed 11,000 jobs lost in Ontario, while British Columbia and Alberta lost 23,000 and 15,000 jobs respectively.

And even these figures are deceptive in measuring the impact of

job loss. For example, in Ontario, March figures show that as many as 40,000 full-time jobs were lost in Ontario, but because they were replaced by 29,000 part-time jobs, total job loss comes in at 11,000.

Jobless numbers in cities across Canada are also grim. In Toronto and Hamilton, official unemployment is up to 8.8 per cent; in Sault Ste. Marie, unemployment is at 10.6 per cent (an increase of nearly 3 per cent since March 2008) while in Windsor, official unemployment pushes 14 per cent. In Summerside, PEI, unemployment is over 16 per cent. In Cape Breton, unemployment is over 17 per cent.

Despite these figures, Prime

Minister Stephen Harper is still trying to paint a rosy picture, claiming that Canada will recover from the recession by the end of 2009. But TD Bank Financial Group Chief Executive Ed Clark disagrees with such optimism.

As reported in the Toronto Star, Clark predicts “a temporary uptick in economic activity caused by the massive sums governments are spending. But that will be followed by 30 years of very slow growth and persistent unemployment.”

Yet Harper has refused to make substantive changes to fix Canada’s Employment Insurance (EI) program.

>>page 2

Page 4 Paul Stevenson on the growing divide in the NATO alliance

Resisting the Olympic Games

Page 5 Peter William on the Games’ links with capitalist competition

Ontario’s Green Energy Act

Page 10

Communities unite to oppose deporations by paul kellogg

Some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in Canada are the migrant workers who do heavy labour, many on Canadian farms.

On April 2, in southern Ontario, dozens of migrant workers were arrested, handcuffed and detained. In some cases, the police raids even included what can only be called home invasions, entering residences in Toronto’s east end, and taking away per-

sonal possessions when individuals could not be found.

On April 5, an emergency demonstration of close to 200 family members and supporters gathered in anger outside the fences of the Rexdale Immigration Detention Centre, demanding the release of the 80 to 90 detained workers inside. The raids were carried out by Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), in conjunction with local police in Simcoe County, as well as in Leamington,

Windsor and on the Danforth in Toronto.

In a press release from the Pacific Free Press, Jonathan Canchela said: “One of my relatives was arrested in the raid. She called me from jail this morning.

She and her co-workers are terrified that they may be deported at any time.” Canchela is chair of the Filipino Migrant Workers Movement—and member of Migrante-Ontario.

It is clear that the Harper Tor-

ies have made a turn towards “divide and conquer” as a means of diverting attention from the economic slump. They want us to demand the arrest and deportation of “illegal” migrant workers, distracting us from the real culprits for this slump: the bankers and managers who gambled away the profits created by workers in the last economic expansion.

For more information, visit www.toronto.nooneisillegal.org.

Michele McAuley on the Liberals’ addiction to nuclear energy

CPMA No. 58554253-99 ISSN No. 0836-7094 $1 or $2 at newsstands

CAF legal challenge exposes Kenney by james clark On March 31, the federal court responded to a case brought by the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) against Minister of Citizenship Jason Kenney’s decision to cut funding for its immigrant settlement program.

Although Justice Kelen denied CAF’s request for an injunction, he had strong words for Kenney’s behaviour. Kenney unilaterally cut millions of dollars from CAF’s highly successful English-language program, shortly after CAF sharply criticized Kenney’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

In his ruling, Justice Kelen states: “The Court finds that the evidence to date demonstrates that the respondent Minister did probably breach his legal duty to act fairly to the applicant.

The Court would have expected the respondent to respect this elementary and fundamentally important principle and rule of law.”

Kelen’s preliminary ruling is already a vindication for CAF, which has rebuffed claims by Kenney that it is an anti-Semitic organization that promotes hate. CAF’s legal application was backed by a number of high-profile Jewish supporters.

CAF also has a long history of supporting peace and justice initiatives, involving Muslims, Christians, Jews, people of no faith, and many other communities.

To see Justice Kelen’s ruling in full, visit www.decisions.fct-cf. gc.ca/en/9/2009fc333/ 2009fc333.html.

Parliament calls for Khadr’s repatriation by jesse mclaren On March 23, the House of Commons passed New Democrat Human Rights Critic Wayne Marston’s concurrence motion which calls for the immediate repatriation of Omar Khadr.

Khadr, a Canadian citizen, has been held in Guantánamo Bay for the last six years, since his capture by US forces in Afghanistan.

Marston’s motion endorses a report compiled a year ago by the House Subcommittee on Human Rights, which called for Khadr’s repatriation.

“It is now the will of the House that the child solider Omar Khadr be repatriated,” said Marston. “Canadians have spoken through their representatives.

“It is time for the Prime Minister to bring Omar Khadr home.”

All opposition parties supported the motion to repatriate Khadr, as do a growing majority of Canadians.

Resist CN’s attack on activist Shawn Brant by michelle robiDoux

First, government officials tried to silence Native protesters with arrests. Now Canadian National Railways (CN) is hoping to bankrupt First Nations activists who have stood up and fought back.

CN has launched a lawsuit seeking $10 million in damages against Mohawk activists Shawn Brant, Tara Green and Jason Maracle. The lawsuit is retaliation for blockades that were set up in April and June 2007 on the rail line that runs through the Tyendinaga Mohawk territory. First Nations activists blocked the tracks as part of an ongoing attempt to stop development

of land that is part of a Native land claim, and to protest injustices suffered by their people.

Attempts by police to crush the protests have failed. During Shawn Brant’s pre-trial hearing last fall on charges related to the blockades, transcripts of illegal wiretapped conversations between Shawn Brant and OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino showed Fantino threatened that Brant’s “whole world would come crashing down” if the blockades were not ended. When these transcripts came to light, there were demands for Fantino’s resignation.

The lawsuit by CN is out-

rageous. Canada’s railways have been built on native land with little or no say by First Nations people. If there is a debt owed, it is CN that must pay for its threats against First Nations people.

Across this country, First Nations have struggled to have land claims addressed

for many years, while federal and provincial governments stall any settlement.

Meanwhile, the land is being sold off or stripped of resources. When First Nations people fight back against this injustice, they have been brutally suppressed by the state and the corporations whose interests it defends.

If they don’t fight back, they are left to live in desperate conditions.

On April 21, CN shareholders meet in Calgary. Fax or phone CN president E. Hunter Harrison to demand that CN drop the lawsuits against Mohawk activists.

Fax 514.399.5985 and phone 514.399.6450.

BC ELECTION

Kick the Liberals out! by bradley hughes On May 12, the provincial election in BC should be about undoing the damage of eight years of Liberal government.

The NDP’s new platform is good on ending many Liberal policies, but promises little to reverse them and fix the damage.

The NDP’s first priority should be repealing the over $1 billion of tax cuts to the wealthy and the corporations, and then undoing the drastic cuts to public services, privatization of many services and drastic fee hikes—most obviously in the 200 per cent tuition fee hikes.

The NDP won’t do any of this, and the promises they do make are limited by their promise to “spend only what we can afford”. If they don’t undo the Liberal tax cuts, this means spending only what the Liberals have already determined we can afford.

Despite the NDP’s tacit endorsement of most of the Liberal’s policies, they are still the party that most working-class activists are part of, and a vote for them is a vote in solidarity with those activists and a kick in the teeth for the corporate-backed Liberals.

BC labour confronts Liberal policies by bradley hughes As the provincial election in BC gets underway, the BC Federation of Labour shows how to confront the Liberals.

Members of United Steelworkers join the rally in Hamilton against the closure of US Steel. Photo: philip murton

Parliament supports Iraq War resisters by christine beckermann

The campaign to support US Iraq War resisters seeking asylum in Canada has continued to gain support across the country.

On March 30, the House of Commons reaffirmed its support for war resisters, passing a motion calling on the government to stop removal proceedings against Iraq War resisters and to allow them to stay in Canada. The same motion was passed 10 months ago,

in June 2008.

The reaffirmation of support of all opposition parties for sanctuary for war resisters came five days after a threatened deportation date for Kimberly Rivera, her husband Mario and their three young children. Rivera, an Iraq War veteran, was the first female soldier to come to Canada because of her refusal to continue to participate in the war in Iraq.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney continues to

pursue removal orders and has refused to intervene to stop deportations. But the courts have taken a more balanced view of soldiers who are seeking asylum because of their refusal to participate in the illegal and immoral war in Iraq.

Rivera and her family were granted an emergency stay by a federal court judge who recognized that US war resisters who speak out publicly against the war in Iraq have been facing differential treatment

by the US military. War resister Robin Long, who was deported from Canada in July 2008, received a 15-month sentence in the brig—one of the harshest handed out to a deserter of the Iraq War. In order to continue to build the campaign, it is urgent that Kenney continue to see and hear the opposition to his policy of deporting war resisters.

To join the list for urgent actions or to find out more, visit www.resisters.ca.

Fight to fix Employment Insurance Continued from page 1.

For example, no steps have been taken to improve eligibility for the program, and EI income support has only been extended temporarily (until September of 2010) by a measly five weeks.

The CLC has called for one universal standard of 360 hours to qualify for EI and for an extension of income support (based on 60 per cent of the best 12 weeks of earnings prior to layoff) to 50 weeks for all workers re-

2 Socialist Worker 14 April 2009

ceiving EI. It is also calling for the elimination of the two-week waiting period.

However, some unions— like the CAW—are also calling for an additional year of EI income support to be implemented whenever the official unemployment rate hits or exceeds 6.6 per cent.

The Harper Conservatives are fiddling while the pace of job losses in Canada exceeds that of the US. But the federal Liberals are no better. In February, the Liberals under Mi-

chael Ignatieff adopted the federal budget as tabled by Harper, without putting forward a single amendment to improve access to EI. Across Ontario, there is palpable anger among workers at the state of the EI program. But that anger needs to be harnessed into an effective mobilization to demand change.

Local “Fix EI” rallies in Toronto and other cities in Ontario have drawn hundreds into activity, showing that employed and unemployed

workers want to fight together. There is an urgent need to pull that energy into an effective, concerted campaign, built from below.

In Toronto, the May 7 Stewards Assembly called by the Toronto and York Region Labour Council is a crucial step in that direction, and the subsequent June 13 demonstration will help focus the anger over EI and joblessness. More such initiatives need to be taken across Ontario and across Canada.

On April 7, the BC Federation of Labour organized a rally outside a $125 a plate fundraiser and campaign kick-off for Liberal leader Gordon Campbell.

Inside bankers and bosses cheered on their party, outside over 400 people dined on $1.25 hot dogs and listened to labour and community leaders speak about Campbell’s record: lBC is now #1 in child poverty in Canada; lBC has had the largest increases in tuition fees; lBC now has the lowest minimum wage; lDuring Campbell’s time in office 177 public schools have been closed affecting 26,000 students; and lBy allowing raw log exports, 25,000 jobs have been lost.

This is the sort of mobilization that can turn public opinion against the Liberals.

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PAKISTAN

INTERNATIONAL

US air strikes kill hundreds in Pakistan by jonathon hodge April has seen repeated US air strikes in Pakistan, in spite of official censure.

Recent attacks include two drone attacks in four days that left 13 people dead.

Women’s ‘rights’ law reveals NATO mission hypocrisy by bradley hughes A recent repressive family law bill passed in Afghanistan has sparked outrage around the world—and put the lie to NATO claims about “liberating Afghan women”.

A leaked copy of the law was provided to the Times Online. The new law, which applies to the Shia minority in Afghanistan, represents a dramatic attack on women’s rights. The new law prohibits married women from refusing to have sex with their husbands, sanctioning rape within marriage. This is repeated in two articles.

It also takes away women’s freedom of movement by stating that a married woman cannot leave the house without her husband’s permission, except in an emergency. Guardianship of children is granted to their father and paternal grandfather only.

In case of a disagreement, the grandfather has final say.

The age of maturity for boys is set at 15 years and for girls it is when they have their first period. This legalizes child brides. A man’s right to complete control over his wife is emphasized by an article that allows a husband to stop his wife from “any unnecessary, unIslamic act”.

The Afghan president initially said he had studied the law and didn’t see any problems with it. Later he suggested that the Western media outlets had mistranslated the law. Eventually he said he would review the law.

Like much of the record of NATO’s allies in Afghanistan, this law shows they are nearly indistinguishable from the Taliban. The law passed in parliament without debate.

Karzai signed the law before it received international attention.

Neither Harper nor Ignatieff’s concern for women’s rights rings true. They were silent when a fe-

male MP Malalai Joya was kicked out of the Afghan parliament.

They were silent when her life was threatened for opposing corruption in the Afghan government.

Harper’s Tories took away women’s rights to fight for pay equity in collective bargaining in the most recent budget. Ignatieff’s Liberal party voted for it without comment.

To protect women’s rights in Afghanistan, remove NATO troops and their support for this corrupt government. To defend women’s rights in Canada, get rid of Harper and Ignatieff.

Israeli soldiers admit war crimes in Gaza offensive by jonathon hodge

Israel came under political fire recently after more soldiers involved in the January offensive in Gaza revealed that troops were allowed, and even ordered, to shoot unarmed Palestinians.

This testimony is sharply at odds with official accounts from the military; it corroborates accounts brought forward

by Palestinians, and justifies the long-held suspicions of international groups.

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One soldier described how a mother and her child were shot and killed by a sniper for turning left instead of right when coming out of a house (after being ordered out by IDF troops).

Another soldier said: “At the beginning, the directive was to enter a house with an armoured vehicle, to break the door down, to start shooting inside and—I call it murder—to shoot at everyone we identify.”

Another squad leader argued with his Commanding Officer over

permissive rules of engagement and was told that, “We should shoot everyone there [in the centre of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist.”

Israeli human rights organizations have called for an independent investigation.

They rightly point out that military police did not announce their own investigation until after the story had broken in the popular press, three weeks after the conclusion of the offensive, during which time they had all

the relevant information.

These abuses came to light at the same time as racist T-shirts surfaced from within IDF units, including one of a pregnant Palestinian women seen through rifle crosshairs, with the caption: “One Shot, two kills.”

All this from what the Israeli defence minister claims is “the most moral army in the world”.

Acts like these, however, are building public opposition to Israel’s wars, and exposing the reality of Israeli aggression.

GLOBAL CRISIS E MARXISM 2009 C N A T IS S E R L A B GLONEED FOR SOCIALISM HAS NEVER BEEN GREATER! THE

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Correspondents report that since August 2008, more than 35 suspected drone attacks have killed more than 340 people, in spite of Pakistan being a nominal US ally in the “war on terror”.

This latest incident comes only three days after a US missile strike killed at least 14 in Pakistan’s Orakzai tribal area, in the border region with Afghanistan. Pakistani officials are understandably upset at the strikes, which they argue will inflame regional tensions at a time when the Pakistani state can not afford greater unrest.

Unrest is, however, exactly what will occur, should the US extend its Afghan war into neighbouring Pakistan.

At a time when NATO officials admit that their war in Afghanistan will not be won on the battlefield, and when forces opposed to US interests are more confident than ever in Pakistan, the Pentagon and the White House would do well to heed their allies’ advice and look to other options.

Indiscriminate killing will likely prove no more useful than it has in Afghanistan and Iraq.

EGYPT

Egyptian police attack protests Thousands of Egyptian police were deployed across Egypt in early April, in an attempt to stifle protests on April 6—the anniversary of the 2008 Mahalla strike.

Pro-democracy activists called on supporters to join a nation-wide strike to protest worsening economic conditions and the decades-long dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition group, said it would back the protests.

Widespread police repression, however, seems to have stifled the protests.

Over 100 people rallied on the steps of the Journalists’ Syndicate in central Cairo, but elsewhere demonstrators were rebuffed by large numbers of riot police.

Students led protests on campus in Cairo, and across Egypt, but also faced repression.

Over 100 MPs walked out of Parliament to show their support for the protests.

In recent years, Mubarak has expanded the so-called “emergency laws”—in effect since 1981—to crack down on all forms of political dissent.

A wave of strikes swept Egypt from 2007 to 2008, threatening to connect economic demands with the growing anger for political reform.

During the Mahalla strike in 2008, tens of thousands of demonstrators joined anti-Mubarak protests. Riot police killed three people, and injured hundreds more.

14 April 2009 Socialist Worker 3

TALKING MARXISM

INTERNATIONAL

Abbie Bakan

Kenney’s Canada: what happened to free speech?

Tory Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, was appointed by Stephen Harper on October 30, 2008. Since then, Kenney has distinguished himself by an exceptional record of repression.

The list is long. It includes: denial of funding for the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) to support new immigrants; a statement from his office challenging Israeli Apartheid Week on university campuses; a number of deportations of US war resisters; and banning elected UK MP George Galloway from entry to Canada for several speaking engagements.

Squarely in Kenney’s crosshairs are the historic victims of the post-9/11 “war on terror”—the Arab and Muslim communities represented by CAF—and those who have stood in solidarity with those communities, like US war resisters, Palestine solidarity activists, and, apparently, elected anti-war MPs. Canada is now presenting itself unabashedly as a racist state, where unbridled Islamophobia gets a green light directly from the PMO. The message is that anyone who dares to speak out or stand up against the war machine will face reprisals, including funding cuts, public attacks, deportation and censorship.

In February the Canadian Arab Federation replied to Kenney’s attacks: “We note with disappointment that this… attack on the CAF is part of a campaign waged by Mr. Kenney who has targeted and systematically vilified the CAF... Mr. Kenney [has] smeared and stereotyped the Arab community... and he described CAF as a racist organization...”

The CAF statement continued: “Mr. Kenney’s most recent attack on CAF came… at an anti-Semitism conference in London, England where he labeled the CAF and Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) as groups that promote anti-Semitism.”

Free speech

Kenney’s, and Harper’s, mission is both to advance Islamophobia, and to challenge the freedom to speak out against Canada’s war on Afghanistan and close alliance with Israel.

George Galloway, banned from entering Canada by Kenney in February, has spoken often in Canada to mass audiences. Galloway recently returned from a humanitarian aid mission to Gaza. The popular convoy, Viva Palestina, expressed the wave of solidarity by supporters in Britain for the victims of Israel’s relentless 22-day assault—“Operation Cast Lead”—last December and January.

As Toronto Star columnist Linda McQuaig aptly put it: “George Galloway… definitely poses a threat—although not the security one alleged by the Harper government.

Rather, Galloway, a five-times elected member of the British Parliament, poses a threat to Stephen Harper’s ability to sell Canadians on our involvement in the Afghan war and on Ottawa’s support for Israel in its battle against the Palestinians... It was fear of Galloway galvanizing anti-war sentiment in peace-oriented Canadians that prompted Ottawa to brand him a terrorist supporter—for providing urgently needed cash and medical supplies to Hamas, the democratically elected government in Gaza.”

‘Democratic values’

The Tories’ justification for the war in Afghanistan, and for cutting off aid to Palestine, is a defence of “democratic values”. But apparently free speech is not one of these.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. The Tories are picking up a thread in Canada’s long history of ambivalence about basic democratic rights.

In the 1940s, as the new United Nations Declaration of Human Rights was being drafted, Canada was an ambivalent participant in the process. Canada’s Aboriginal population was subject to the criminal residential school system, in place to “civilize” them. The War Measures Act allowed for the internment of “enemy aliens”, and thousands of Japanese Canadians, as well as communists, immigrants and even Jehovah’s Witnesses were arrested.

In 1947, a Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on Human Rights and Freedoms was mandated “to consider the question of human rights and fundamental freedoms”, with particular reference to the new policy framework of the United Nations.

According to legal scholar William Schabas: “The Parliamentarians spent several sessions examining the draft Declaration... When attention turned to the non-discrimination provision of the draft Declaration... some parliamentarians expressed concern about how this might apply to Canadians of Japanese descent and to Amerindians.”

State rhetoric associating “Canadian values” with inclusiveness and democracy fails to apply to certain “Canadians”, including legal citizens. Indigenous peoples, visible minorities and those who dissent too loudly against Canadian imperialist policies are all too familiar with this pattern.

But this is not only a marker of Harper’s Tories. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff refused to take a clear position in defense of George Galloway’s right to speak in Canada. He shamefully gave ground to the bogus “terrorist” charges, stating that if “the security services know something about George Galloway that I don’t”, the ban was justified.

Ignatieff also added his voice to the condemnation of Israeli Apartheid Week, directly following Jason Kenney, racing to demonstrate the Liberals’ right wing, pro-Israel credentials.

The NDP federal leadership has thankfully objected to some of Kenney’s recent attacks, referring to him as the “Minister of Censorship”.

But what is needed to stop this wave of repression led by the Canadian state is more than a few objecting voices. To win real freedom of speech will demand a mass movement, built from below, extending the movements to end racism, war and imperialism.

4 Socialist Worker 14 April 2009

No consensus on future of Afghanistan at NATO Summit remained tellingly silent on membership for Georgia and the Ukraine. After desperately trying to mend fences with Russia at the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting last month, the US decided to avoid the hot button issue of membership for these two countries.

The US now finds itself needing Russian support for the war in Afghanistan. NATO supply routes in the south are vulnerable and the only other options to supply their ground forces are through Russia and the Central Asian Republics.

by paul stevenson The 60th anniversary NATO Summit in Strasbourg, France was supposed to be the moment when the new Obama administration would showcase its revamped strategy on Afghanistan, in an attempt to convince more NATO countries to deploy troops.

However, European countries committed no more than 5,000 new troops, and most will be deployed only for a short term during the Afghan presidential elections in August. It was hardly the groundswell that the US had hoped for.

Despite a lot of rhetoric about the new strategy in Afghanistan, the reality is that there are still no “benchmarks” with which to judge the success or failure of the mission from NATO’s perspective.

When asked what would constitute success in Afghanistan, NATO leaders continue to give the same insufficient answer. US Defense Undersecretary Michèle Flournoy, speaking at the Senate Armed Services Committee, was asked what the endgame is in Afghanistan.

She replied: “Success is when both the Afghans and the Pakistanis have both the capability and the will to deal with the remaining threat themselves.”

We have heard this before, but each and every new deployment is not creating space for the Afghans and Pakistanis to control the “threats”, but is working to build a renewed resistance. The escalation of attacks into Pakistan is strengthening the resistance forces. The resistance in Pakistan routinely torches NATO supply lines and Afghan militias control more of the country than NATO.

Protests As the Afghan war garners greater attention in the US, more people are coming to the same conclusion—bringing the troopshome. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote a report this year that states: “The only meaningful way to halt the insurgency’s momentum is to start withdrawing troops. The presence of foreign troops is the most important element driving the resurgence of the Taliban.”

Yet the Obama administration is moving in the opposite direction. There have already been 21,000 new US troops deployed; that number could increase resulting in a total of 68,000 US tro,ops by the end of the year. These troops are supposed to be rooting out al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, despite the fact that most military planners acknowledge that alQaeda has long ago left Afghanistan.

NATO expansion

At the summit, NATO agreed to extend membership to Albania and Croatia but

In contrast to the hand-shaking and photo ops at the summit, there were demonstrations against NATO throughout the region. French President Nicholas Sarkosy had virtually shut down the border between Germany and France to protesters, and the whole city of Strasbourg was an armed camp.

Still, as many as 30,000 people marched in protests in Strasbourg and Baden Baden, on the German side of the border. Protests occurred throughout France and in North America.

In Canada, more than a dozen towns organized events to coincide with the summit. This is crucial.

The war in Afghanistan has lasted for more than seven years and the sense of urgency is sometimes uneven in the movement, but we know that the current NATO strategy in the area is doomed to failure.

The need to expand the networks of people discussing the war in Afghanistan and the future of NATO is a key to developing the anti-imperialist movements throughout the world.

Workers across Europe occupy to save jobs by benoit renaud Workers at the Visteon car components manufacturing plants in Belfast, Enfield and Basildon are fighting for justice after they were sacked in early April. The workers in Belfast and Enfield occupied their sites. In Enfield, the company sacked the whole workforce of about 200 with no warning.

The workers followed the example of their Belfast counterparts and occupied their plant.

The Ford employees, many of them having worked for that company all their lives, are asking the government to intervene if the company persists

with the job cuts. They also see their fight as an example of what workers can do to respond to layoffs, and refuse to pay for the bosses’ crisis.

Similar actions have been taking place across Europe, notably in France, where plant occupations to protest job cuts have been frequent in the past few months. The New Anticapitalist Party, which is gaining increasing support among workers and the unemployed, is calling for a complete ban on layoffs.

Millions of French workers took to the streets on March 19 to denounce the government’s collusion with the employers and to demand a different policy in response to the crisis.

W

ith less than a year to go before the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (VANOC) juggernaut keeps rolling on. Despite tremendous resistance and a price tag that is soaring well beyond the initial budget, the Games are moving forward.

Like past Games, the 2010 Olympics pose a significant threat to local people and represent the destructive powers of capitalism and nationalism on a world stage.

The modern Olympic Games originated to strengthen nationalism between competing imperial powers. They are anything but the unifying event they are described as in the Olympic charter.

The stated goal of the Olympic Movement is “to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play”.

But the Olympics, as practiced in Vancouver, and other host cities around the world, instead reinforce the preference for private use of the environment, the siphoning of public resources away from the public good towards private interests, a preference for militarism and discrimination against indigenous people, with a spirit of disgust, detachment and inequity for the poor.

Price tag

The cost of the Olympics have historically been a terrible burden on cities.

The promised benefits of job creation and tourism fail to pay off.

The City of Montreal has just finished paying for the 1976 summer Games and the 1997 Athens Games decimated the Greek economy, costing them $14.2 billion ($12.9 billion more than the International Olympic Committee estimated) and sending the government’s deficit to a record high.

We can already see signs of this happening in Vancouver.

The same day of the announcement that Montreal had finally paid back its debt, VANOC announced that the construction costs of the Olympic venues had climbed to $508 million, 23 per cent higher than initial estimates. The Dominion reports that Vancouver had pledged $600 million for their games and is thus far $110 million over budget.

While the Olympic Games bring in tourism that can be good for restaurants and hotel business, it is unlikely that they will generate enough revenue to cover the massive public expenditure required to hold the games.

In addition, the City of Vancouver has agreed to lend up to $100 million to bail out real estate developer Millennium Development Group which is more than $60 million over budget on the construction of the athletes’ village.

Olympic Games reflect capitalism The modern Games represent the destructive powers of capitalism and nationalism on a world stage, writes Peter William developed countries. With the Olympic Games comes the temptation to sweep these “undesirables” off the streets and away from public sight.

However, Human Rights Watch has noted that aggressive crackdowns on dealers and addicts, as in the Vancouver Police Department’s “Operation Torpedo,” will exacerbate HIV problems.

Already some 40 per cent of addicts in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside are HIV positive. The report from Human Rights Watch warns that the abuse and harassment that have come with Operation Torpedo will increase infection, citing examples from similar situations of aggressive targeting of addicts.

Displacement

The Olympics put cities into debt.

They also displace poor and marginalized people from downtown cores, and increase the cost of housing for the benefit of real estate developers.

Originally, the athletes’ village was marketed on the premise that it would be turned into low-income housing following the games. However, this promise turned out to be a Trojan Horse. It has been revealed that the units are to be sold at market value instead.

Provincial and municipal taxpayers are now on the hook for paying real estate development companies to build and sell for-profit housing. This is especially disheartening when one considers that Vancouver has North America’s fastest growing homeless population.

Instead of using public money to alleviate the rampant poverty and homelessness, city funds are going to evicting the poor from high-demand real estate, and to criminalizing homelessness in order to “clean up the streets” and give the games a glossy sheen.

Vancouver also has the largest population of intravenous drug users in Canada and, correspondingly, one of the worst epidemics of HIV/AIDS of

Security

‘The Games provide a stage for corporate interests to be put on display to the world’

Beyond criminalizing homelessness, the 2010 Olympic Games are set to turn Vancouver into a police state. The Vancouver Sun reports that security expenses for the games may cost up to a total of $800 million, compared to the budgeted $175 million.

These costs are made up of many distinct “security” measures, including: harassment and attempted espionage into community groups opposing the Games; the cost of over 12,000 police, military and security personnel; 20 metre crowd-controlling fences; closed-circuit surveillance cameras; and aerial surveillance.

The run-up to the Olympics thus far have been characterized by attempts to silence critics, arrest activists and, as RCMP Assistant Commissioner Bud Mercer warns, swift responses to protests outside of the designated “protest zones”.

At its most fundamental level, these games represent an assault on the indigenous people of British Columbia.

Most of BC remains unceded, nonsurrendered indigenous land. The construction of Olympics facilities and infrastructure encroaches on this land

and dispossesses people from it, something the government has no legal right to do.

Despite this, as stated on www. no2010.com, the BC government continues to “sell, lease and ‘develop’ Native land for the benefit of corporations, including mining, logging, oil and gas, and ski resorts”. The decision to hold the Games and expand further and further into Native lands is exceptionally galling, as the province of BC has no legal or moral right to exist, let alone penetrate further into unceded lands.

Much of this land is already being destroyed for the expansion and construction of highways, ski resorts and other Olympic venues, funded in large part by taxpayer money. While sponsors advertise the games as “green”, thousands of trees have been cut down and mountainsides disfigured by explosives to create Olympic venues in the Callaghan Valley and expand the Sea-to-Sky Highway. Destroying forest, animals, and indigenous lands, the 2010 Olympics are ecologically devastating.

Corporate interests

The Olympic Games provide a stage for corporate interests to be put on display to the world, a commercial spectacle that has a long tradition of privatizing profits and socializing losses.

While the Olympics put communities into debt and displace residents, the corporatization of the Olympics has become big business.

Myths about the benefits of hosting the Olympics are maintained with incredible force to the benefit of elite corporate stakeholders. While the brief gains associated with increased employment for workers in the service and construction sectors are touted as natural benefits of the Olympic experience, the real benefactors are privileged government and corporate officials, huge construction companies, large property owners, TV corpora-

tions and corporate sponsors.

The mass media, which reap so many rewards from the Olympic industry, act in collusion with the propagation of the corporate myth that the Olympic Games are inherently good for communities and the world. In her book, Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics and Activism, Helen Jefferson Lenskyj writes: “The structural integration of the media into the Olympic Industry has turned them into promoters-not journalists or critics-of all things Olympic.”

So, while the commercialization of the Olympics gives preference to corporate and elite messages, the dissent or mere voices of regular people are silenced. The Olympic industry relies on selling private ad space and the ownership of all things visible to the camera and audiences.

For instance, at the Sydney Games, students were hired as “t-shirt police” to inspect what audience members were wearing to ensure that only corporate logos of sponsors were visible in the venues and on television screens.

The preference for private discourses over public ones has become quite evident in Vancouver as the neighbourhood that has been cordoned off for the Games is going through a “cleansing” of all visuals, posters, writings and other public messages that have not been paid for by sponsors and sanctioned by the Olympic organizers.

With the convergence of so many contentious issues, the Vancouver 2010 Games are a potential powder keg ready to explode. Leading up to the games, there have been arson attacks and other acts of vandalism carried out on Olympic sponsors, police and military targets, and the phrase “RIOT 2010” can be seen spray painted all over Vancouver. The Olympic Resistance Network is working hard to educate the public and put forth their message as to “why we resist”.

14 April 2009 Socialist Worker 5

MAY DAY A HISTORY OF RESISTANCE Jesse McLaren examines the roots of May Day, its history of resistance to

capitalism, and the central role of workers in struggles for peace and justice

F

or more than 120 years, workers of the world have united to celebrate May Day. The size and scope of events has been a barometer of the constant struggle for a better world.

With a new economic crisis and movements of resistance, May Day is re-emerging as an important day for solidarity and action.

Eight-hour workday

May Day emerged in the US in the campaign to shorten the workday.

At its annual convention in Chicago in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labour Unions (the future American Federation of Labour) declared that the eight-hour workday would begin May 1, 1886, and that it would be enforced with strikes and demonstrations.

As a pamphlet proclaimed at the time: “Lay down your tools on May 1, 1886. Cease your labour, close the factories, mills, and mines—for one day in the year… one day of revolt—not of rest…a day on which labour makes its own laws and has the power to execute them!

“All without the consent or approval of those who oppress and rule…A day of protest against oppression and tyranny, against ignor6 Socialist Worker 14 April 2009

‘Originally intended as a one-time event to demand an eight-hour workday, May Day has continued beyond this victory’

ance and war of any kind.”

This outlined the May Day tradition that continues today: workers using their labour power, regardless of state sanction, to fight for economic and political demands.

On May Day 1886, half a million workers went on strike across the US. In Chicago, the strikes brought renewed energy to workers at McCormick Harvesting Machine company, who had been locked out for months. A garrison of police was sent to protect strikebreakers, and when the workers confronted them, police opened fire, killing two.

At a rally the next day in Haymarket Square, a bomb went off and police again opened fire, killing more. Then police arrested eight anarchist trade unionists, who were sentenced to death at a rigged trial.

This severe repression sent a chill through the nascent labour movement, but it reasserted itself a few years later. The Second International, an organization of workers around the world, adopted the motion for “a great international demonstration”, and in 1890 May Day went global.

In London, Friedrich Engels addressed a rally of 300,000. Originally intended as a one-time event to demand an eight-hour workday,

May Day has continued beyond this victory, adapting to specific campaigns and reaffirming international solidarity and workers’ power.

Peace and revolution

In 1916, May Day in Germany became the focus of anti-war opposition. When the socialist Karl Liebnecht was arrested for his speech, “Down with the government, down with the war”, 50,000 metal workers struck for his release.

At the same time, May Day celebrations in Russia served to gauge the militancy of the working class in the lead-up to the revolution that won peace and democracy. In the brief years of socialism in Russia, May Day became a rallying point for workers around the world to try to break Russia’s isolation by spreading the revolution in their own countries.

In response, states across Europe that sent armies abroad to crush the Russian Revolution also undermined May Day at home. The French government called for May Day to celebrate national unity rather than international workers’ solidarity, while fascist Italy banned May Day and substituted a day to celebrate the Roman Empire. May Day suppression has continued in various ways ever since. Nazi Germany

declared May Day a day of work, and the next day banned unions and arrested their leaders. At the height of McCarthyism in the US, the state called May Day “Loyalty Day” and then “Law Day” in an attempt to purge its radical nature. On the other side of the Cold War divide, state capitalist regimes turned May Day into a bureaucratized media stunt for Russia and China to parade their nuclear arsenals.

Defeating the Tories

But workers have defiantly continued to assert May Day and use it as a focal point for organizing.

During the Depression, Canadian Tory Prime Minister R.B. Bennett’s response to unemployment was to create militarized work camps that paid 20 cents a day.

In April 1935 in British Columbia, 1,500 unemployed workers in government relief camps walked off the job and made their way to Vancouver. There they staged marches, protests and occupations to protest the government’s unemployment policies, and to demand aid. Workers formed a Relief Camp Workers’ Union, and demanded better wages, unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation, an end to police repression, and democratically elected committees. Labour organ-

to support the demand for it to be a public holiday. These played a major part in bringing down the old regime and winning the democratic rights we enjoy today. That is why it is a day to be treasured and must never be lost.”

Resisting neoliberalism

izer and socialist Arthur Evans also argued for the broader labour movement to call for solidarity strikes and demonstrations for May 1.

May Day 1935 featured strikes by miners and longshore workers across the province, while restaurant workers and students walked out to join a march of 20,000 in downtown Vancouver. This mobilized support for the “On to Ottawa Trek” the following month, when a thousand relief camp workers boarded freight trains to take their demands directly to Ottawa. Though they were violently stopped at Regina, workers’ resistance helped bring down Bennett in elections a few months later, and close the camps.

In Portugal in 1974, May Day occurred a week after the fall of the nearly half-century dictatorship.

That day, 100,000 people marched in Lisbon, many on their first May Day celebration, waving red flags and hearing from left-wing leaders returned from exile. This became a launching pad for strike waves, which involved 200,000 workers in more than 150 workplaces that month, and a progressive movement in the armed forces.

Ending apartheid

Workers’ power

During the upsurge of struggles in the late 1960s and early 1970s, May Day coincided with a number of important events. Through March and April 1968, French students protested against codes of conduct and the Vietnam War. In early May, university administrator and police repression radicalized a much wider layer of students, who erected barricades in Paris.

A student occupation of the elite Sorbonne university led to an intellectual, cultural and political explosion critiquing all aspects of society.

The student spark ignited the worker flame. When trade unions called for a general strike, political demands against police violence spilled over to economic demands over wages, retirement age and labour rights. Then workers began occupying their factories and briefly running society, while their president hid in Germany fearing another French revolution.

‘May Day remains a rallying point to celebrate this victory, and to continue to connect economic and political issues’

In 1985, South African workers formed the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which became the backbone of the fight against Apartheid. Because the regime depended on exploiting the Black working class, workers collectively withdrawing their labour power became a powerful weapon for struggle.

On May Day 1986, COSATU called a strike that involved one and-a-half million workers, the first of many major strikes that ultimately ended Apartheid. On April 27, 1994, South Africans voted in their first multiracial democratic elections, and a few days later May Day was declared a national holiday to honour the role workers played in defeating Apartheid.

May Day remains a rallying point to celebrate this victory, and to continue to connect economic and political issues—from demands for a living wage to the fight against HIV/AIDS. As COSATU declared on May Day 2007: “In the dark days of Apartheid, South African workers proudly adopted 1 May as their day, and staged some of their biggest stayaways and demonstrations

In recent years May Day has resurfaced across Canada and Quebec as a rallying point against neoliberalism. In 2004 an illegal strike by hospital workers in BC galvanized years of opposition to neoliberalism.

On May Day hospital workers led a march of 15,000 in Vancouver, the air filled with calls for a general strike. Had the trade union bureaucracy not sold out the strike the following day, the province would have ground to a halt and dealt a blow to Premier Gordon Campbell.

In 2003 Quebec trade unions were central to mobilizing 250,000 people in Montreal against the Iraq War, a key event in stopping the Liberals from joining the war. This political radicalization fed into economic battles: the following year 100,000 marched in Montreal for May Day, targeting the neo-liberal policies of Jean Charest. In 2007 a right-wing backlash spear-headed by the racist ADQ party saw May Day attendance drop to 3,000. But last year May Day participation surged back up to 50,000, accompanying the collapse of the ADQ and the growth of left-wing party Québec solidaire.

Fighting racism and war

May Day is now returning to its roots. In the US the re-emergence of workers’ confidence is reflected

by May Day events that have used strikes as collective weapons against racism and war.

In 2005 the US government began passing a bill that would further criminalize undocumented workers, in order to increase their exploitation and create racist hysteria.

But immigrant workers and their allies fought back. In March 2006 a coalition of Catholic groups, immigrant advocacy groups and labour unions organized a series of massive rallies, including half a million in Los Angeles. Reviving the labour drives and boycott campaigns of Cesar Chavez, the protest wave became a launching pad for strikes on May Day 2006, dubbed “The Great American Boycott” and “A Day Without an Immigrant”.

To show how much the US economy depends on migrant workers, organizers called on their supporters to not buy, sell, work or attend school. Millions of people took part in strikes, demonstrations, and walkouts, which called for amnesty and legalization of undocumented workers and their families. Marches featured national flags from across the Americas mingling with red flags and portraits of Che Guevara. In a show of solidarity, trade unions in Mexico and Central America called for a boycott of American products on May Day. These mobilizations succeeded in defeating the racist bill.

Last May Day, 25,000 longshore workers in the US shut down 29

ports on the west coast to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to demand the withdrawal of troops.

The International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) has a history of shutting down the ports in solidarity actions: against the Pinochet dictatorship, Apartheid South Africa, and the incarceration of Mumia Abu Jamal. This was the first time an American union has taken job action against an ongoing US war.

ILWU Vietnam veterans led the drive to declare May Day a “No Peace, No Work Holiday,” to recognize that working-class families bear the brunt of US militarism. As ILWU Local 34 President Richard Cavalli told a rally: “George Bush’s daughters get married in the White House, and our sons and daughters get buried in Iraq.”

Because of their strategic role in the economy, the longshore workers were able to paralyze the ports that process $1 billion of cargo daily, fighting back against the corporate warmongers. At a forum in Toronto the following month organized by the Canadian Peace Alliance and the Canadian Labour Congress, strike organizer Clarence Thomas explained: “The working class can speak for itself and that is why it is so critical for us to take action at the point of production: at the workplace. This is where we have our muscle, this is where we have our leverage and we need to use it”.

In response, the General Union of Port Workers in Iraq issued a statement of solidarity: “The courageous decision you made to carry out a strike on May Day to protest against the war and occupation of Iraq advances our struggle against occupation to bring a better future for us and for the rest of the world as well.”

Economic crisis

This year’s May Day takes place in the context of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, which is increasing attacks on workers at home and abroad. But it is also in the context of growing radicalization and confidence to fight back, from the left-wing governments sweeping Latin America to the strike waves across Europe raising the hopes of a new May 1968.

Gaining inspiration and insight from previous May Days, we can see how workers activity has been central to struggles for a better world: winning the eight-hour workday, ending Apartheid in South Africa and Tory rule in Canada, fighting racism and war, and raising the possibility of socialism.

As the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg wrote a century ago: “The first of May demanded the introduction of the eight-hour day. But even after this goal was reached, May Day was not given up. As long as the struggle of the workers against the bourgeoisie and the ruling class continues, as long as all demands are not met, May Day will be the yearly expression of these demands. And, when better days dawn, when the working class of the world has won its deliverance, then too humanity will probably celebrate May Day in honor of the bitter struggles and the many sufferings of the past.”

14 April 2009 Socialist Worker 7

letters@socialist.ca Galloway response shows anti-war mood Opposition to Canada’s war in Afghanistan continues to deepen. While it doesn’t always translate into thousands of people marching in the streets, it still finds ways of expressing itself. The response to the Galloway ban is a good example.

Tens of thousands of people have now watched an online speech by banned British MP George Galloway, who was barred from entering Canada by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. Hundreds of people packed out meeting halls in Toronto, Mississauga, Montreal and Ottawa—four nights in a row—to hear Galloway deliver a live speech entitled “Resisting war from Gaza to Kandahar”.

Yet demonstrations on April 4—to protest the 60th anniversary of NATO and to demand the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan—were relatively small, despite the fact that a majority of people oppose the mission. It’s important for socialists and anti-war activists to take stock of these facts—mainly to avoid knee-jerk responses that dismiss Afghanistan as a critical issue for the movement to engage.

The fact that the war in Afghanistan has lasted nearly eight years has removed the sense of urgency from a situation that continues to get worse. That the mainstream media avoids reporting on the growing death toll among Afghans and increasing air strikes by NATO forces doesn’t help either.

But Afghanistan remains a critical issue. And the anti-war movement has been right to continue organizing on Afghanistan, deepening and expanding its networks, and educating its base. Most people feel desperate for information about what’s happening in Afghanistan; they don’t trust the government line, and they can’t find what they’re looking for in the mainstream media. No wonder there was such an appetite for the Galloway meetings, the same kind of response as when Afghan MP Malalai Joya toured Canada.

Events like these are necessary to prepare the movement for moments when the tide of anti-war sentiment comes rushing back in, and to build the confidence of activists who are eager to discuss and debate the issues.

The response to Kenney’s ban on Galloway—which involved hundreds of activists and thousands of supporters—would not have been possible without the organization of the movement and its allies. All movements have ups and downs, and ebbs and flows; they don’t grow or develop in a straight line. That’s why it’s so important to organize and educate—to be prepared for sudden bursts of anger and energy.

Obama, seals and Western imperialism According to Barack Obama, the seal harvest is “inhumane”. The occupation of Afghanistan?

Not so much.

As a Newfoundlander, I’m all too familiar with the hypocrisy surrounding the anti-seal harvest industry.

I am also well aware of the hypocrisy of the foreign policy of countries like the United States. Recently, these worlds collided.

On Thursday, April 9, the Toronto Star reported on a letter written in 2006 from the then Illinois Senator Barack Obama to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). In this letter Obama registers his disgust with the “inhumane” seal hunt in Canada and committed to

pressuring the Canadian government to stop allowing this act of cruelty.

The US has a trade embargo on all marine mammal products, regardless of whether or not a species is endangered. So Obama’s letter is neither surprising, nor is it a break from the standing US policy on the seal harvest.

But isn’t that just a good example of the reality of the Obama administration?

Despite rhetoric of change the American government remains committed to an imperialist agenda and “routing out the terrorists.”

Aside from the obvious question of how or why a state, which has the death penalty and whose actions

Hillier retires in imperial splendour

Sanction Israel There has always been a compelling case for sanctions against Israel, one of the world’s worst violators of international law. Its 22-day war on Gaza—including a growing list of war crimes—is just the most recent example.

But the case for sanctions is now more compelling than ever, following the formation of an extreme right-wing government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who served as Israel’s prime minister from 1996 to 1999. Netanyahu’s party, Likud, won 27 seats in elections on February 10, losing to Tzipi Livni’s Kadima party which won 28. But Netanyahu formed a coalition with Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, which won 15.

What makes the case for sanctions so compelling is that Israel’s new government, which was sworn in on March 31, does not meet the conditions for recognition that were imposed on the democratically elected Hamas government, following elections in January 2006. At the time, Canada became the first government in the world to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority, in opposition to the election results. The US and Europe followed suit shortly thereafter.

Canada and its allies argued that, in order to win recognition, Hamas had to meet three criteria: recognize the right of Israel to exist; respect international law, including the Oslo Peace Accords and the so-called “Road Map”; and relinquish all forms of violence.

Make no mistake: it was wrong for the West to impose these conditions on Hamas, which won a plurality in a clean and fair election. Palestinians, and not Western governments, should decide who represents them. But when the same conditions are applied to Israel’s new government, it fails on every front—revealing the West’s hypocrisy yet again.

Netanyahu continues to oppose the creation of a Palestinian state, referring to peace talks as “a waste of time”. Many of his coalition allies oppose it as well. Lieberman even campaigned during the election to strip Arab Israelis of their citizenship if they didn’t swear an oath of allegiance to the Israeli state.

Netanyahu and his allies also oppose international law, having campaigned for illegal Jewish-only settlement expansion in the West Bank, one of the largest obstacles to peace in the region.

Lieberman will only support Palestinian statehood in exchange for the transfer of largely Arab populated parts of Israel, a clear violation of even the most tepid peace accords.

Netanyahu and his allies were also the biggest cheerleaders for Israel’s war on Gaza. Many of them opposed a ceasefire, arguing that the war ended too early. The new coalition government is far more likely to resort to military force than its predecessor. And if the previous government already stands accused of war crimes in Gaza, one can only imagine what’s in store for the Palestinians under Netanyahu.

Not surprisingly, Canada has not rushed to condemn the outcome of Israel’s elections or to impose sanctions on the new coalition government—like it did on Hamas. Instead, it has exposed yet again its blatant hypocrisy and obvious double standards when it comes to the Arab world and its treatment of the Palestinians.

8 Socialist Worker 14 April 2009

The farewell party for retiring Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier cost you and me $270,000.

The general oversaw three disastrous years of occupation in Afghanistan and the deaths of almost 100 Canadian soldiers.

That makes him a hero in the eyes of those who cheer for bigger military budgets and more imperial adventures.

Here’s what Hillier got for his send-off: a 21-cannon salute; an aerobatics show featuring the Snowbirds (none crashed for once) and the Skyhawks parachute team; and a tank on which to ride into the sunset.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll be lucky to

get a watch and some cheap champagne for my send-off. Inadequate pension, here I come.

Hillier defended the cost by saying it wasn’t about him, it was all a military “recruiter’s dream”. Oh yeah, and it honoured the families of all those dead soldiers too.

It might all have been worth the cost if it meant we have heard the last of the foul-mouthed general.

But alas, rumours persist that Hillier is weighing his opportunities for a second career in politics as a Tory, naturally.

They say old soldiers don’t die, they just fade away. I wish.

Arthur Scoter Toronto

have killed countless numbers of people throughout the world, decides to place such a high value on the lives of seals, the anti-sealing industry propaganda has even more similarities to the hypocrisy of Western imperialist countries.

The anti-seal hunt industry—and yes it is very much an industry—puts significant resources into promoting false information about the annual seal harvest. They get a good return on their investment though.

These organizations profit handsomely from their star-studded anti-sealing galas. The workers who depend on the harvest for survival are no match for the well financed machine

that is the anti-sealing industry.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the myths perpetrated by organizations like PETA remain well entrenched. Sounds quite a bit like how the lies told by western powers to manufacture support for their imperialist wars, doesn’t it?

As the EU contemplates its own embargo of seal products, I remain frustrated that we cannot seem to get these countries to commit to an embargo on their thinly veiled exports of “democracy” and “development”.

Now that would be change I could believe in.

Heather Finn Ottawa

Why war doesn’t work Imagine a different world, in which there was a different order. What if China, Japan, Russia, India and all the Southeast Asian countries were the ones in the world who were the most wealthy and powerful?

Imagine North America and Europe as lesser among all of them. Now imagine that we have some sort of internal trouble. Maybe fighting among certain ethnic or religious groups. Our country so far has not been able to solve the problem. China decides that since it is advanced and peaceful and feel that our troubles are due to our society not doing things properly, it is going to come in and solve the problem.

China invades us, comes with their superior knowledge

of how society should work, comes with its superior army, to sort us out. How would this feel?

My point is not whether anything going on in another country’s borders is “wrong” or “right”. It is firstly whether or not we should try to forcefix it, and secondly, even if it were right to do that, it cannot and will not ever work.

Especially with cultures from which we are so different and are truly outsiders, and in the context of the West’s historic relationship with this area (of assumed superiority and various former intrusions), and with the polarization in power and position in the world, between us.

Kim Callaghan Vancouver

Crisis in Thailand continues Illegitimate Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva was looking forward to the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Pattya on April 10 to bring international credibility to his lame-duck government.

But in a scene reminiscent of the protests at the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle ten years ago, demonstrators stormed into the ASEAN summit venue and shut down the proceedings.

A minister of the Singaporean government related how his government’s delegation faced the humiliating prospect of being evacuated by small

boat to a nearby naval base.

In the end, most of the summit leaders were evacuated by helicopter from nearby hotel rooftops—in a scene reminiscent of Saigon 1975.

With a growing conflict between Thailand’s elites and the poor, the courageous actions of thousands of protesters over the past weeks show the potential for mass action to challenge not only the rule of the brutal Abhisit government, but also all of those who seek to make workers and the poor pay for Thailand’s growing crisis.

Michelle Robidoux Toronto

Pirates?

BC Liberal ‘green’ is not green

We have heard a lot about Somali “pirates” lately but no discussion of the reasons why people are taking foreign ships.

Since the collapse of the government in 1991, thousands of barrels of nuclear waste from Europe have shown up on Somali beaches causing radiation sickness, birth defects and destroying the livelihood of thousands of fishers.

The response has been the creation of the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia who are “taxing” foreign ships coming into their waters. A recent poll found that more than 70 per cent of Somalis support piracy as a form of national defence.

There are many ways in which BC Premier Gordon Campbell’s so-called green policies in BC are making things worse, but one of the worst examples is the government’s 2002 Energy Plan.

The results of the plan have been an explosion of private hydroelectric schemes. Over 700 streams and rivers have been claimed for development.

To make things worse, provincially owned BC Hydro is forbidden to develop new hydro-electric projects.

This allows the government to claim that the only alternative to buying coal and gas fired electricity from nearby states is private development

S. Paulson Toronto

of hydro electricity.

In fact, there is ample room to improve the efficiencies of electricity generated from dams already owned by BC Hydro.

The process put in place by the Liberals allows the companies proposing new projects to design the public consultation process that is part of the environmental assessment.

The worst of these unneeded projects is a $4 billion proposal from Plutonic power and General Electric.

If approved, this will allow diverting and damming 17 streams and rivers, and the construction of over 445 km of transmission lines,

314 km of roads, and 104 bridges.

This is all in an area that is home to wild salmon, grizzly bears, mountain goats and other species. The proposed development, as admitted by the company itself, is largely to generate electricity for export.

Although the actual generation of electrical power from water flow is green, these unneeded projects will produce massive environmental detestation and alter hundreds of rivers and fragile ecosystems permanently.

For more information, visit www.ourrivers.ca.

Bradley Hughes Vancouver

LEFT JAB

REVIEWS

John Bell

Tory pie, anyone?

I

Che docudrama conclusion embraces triumph and tragedy Film H Che: Part Two H Directed by Steven Soderbergh H Starring Benicio Del Toro and Julia Ormond H Review by Jesse McLaren Steven Soderbergh’s two-part film on the rise and fall of Che Guevara provides a true tribute, revealing the strength of his character and lessons of his strategy.

Part One follows the exhilarating guerilla struggle in Cuba, where Che and a handful of other fighters overthrew a hated US-backed dictator. Part Two documents the depressing final year of Che’s life, as he fails to spread the revolution in Bolivia.

By juxtaposing triumph and tragedy, the films provide an accurate analysis of Che’s strategy. Part Two is obviously less pleasant to watch but is necessary to fully understand the practical outcomes of his politics.

Benicio del Toro portrays Che as a tragic hero, in which his great strength—his moral determination— becomes his great weakness. He is a model of self-sacrifice, rejecting social status in an uncompromising battle for a better world. Part One sees him leave his affluent profession to fight a guerilla struggle. Part Two begins with him

leaving his high-ranking post in Revolutionary Cuba where he is known and admired, to journey disguised and alone to another country. Soderbergh’s documentary style builds a natural sympathy for the man, but ambivalence to his methods.

Revolution

Che elevates his moral outrage against capitalism into political strategy, arguing that “conditions are always right” for revolution. Having succeeded against all odds in Cuba, he makes a virtue of necessity and tries to mechanically replicate the revolution in Bolivia.

The only thing more depressing than watching a revolutionary icon being hunted, captured and killed, is seeing how doomed to failure his project was from the start.

Disconnected from the peasants and the politicized miners, and abandoned by the Communist Party, Che is left wandering an unfamiliar jungle with untrained recruits and dwindling supplies, hunted by an organized army backed by

US imperialism. Frequent use of closerange camera work creates claustrophobic tension that reflects the progressive encirclement of the guerillas.

This close focus comes at the expense of missing the broader context that Che struggled against. Cold War politics divided the world between imperialist rivals Russia and the US, and the newly independent Cuban state was quickly swallowed into Russia’s sphere of influence.

Communist Parties were subordinated to Russian foreign policy, and blunted progressive movements. Che’s defining internationalism and voluntarism were a heroic attempt to break free from these constraints.

Now that the Cold War is over, genuine socialism is once again on the agenda, and Che’s dream of pan-American resistance is becoming a reality as struggles sweep the continent. In this context, Soderbergh’s biography of Che provides inspiration and lessons for the new anti-capitalist movement. Hasta la victoria siempre!

The struggle against imperialism—with guitars!

Book H Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam H By Mark LeVine H Review by Jonathon Hodge When one stops to think of the musical styles that have come to be synonymous with protest or with liberation movements, heavy metal is surely not one of them.

That may change with the help of Mark LeVine’s inspiring treat of a book, Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam.

LeVine is a professor of Islamic studies at University of California Irvine and he combines his considerable historical knowledge with a passion for metal and hard rock music (and the guitar skills to match) in a musical odyssey through Morocco, Iran, Palestine, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon and Pakistan.

His goal is to celebrate the underground musical movements in those countries and to explore the ways in which the youth of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) use music as a vehicle for resistance.

He discovers vibrant music scenes that draw heavy influence from the Western greats Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and others, while they infuse their sound with the melodies and instruments of their own

upbringing to create a never-beforeheard style of hard rock that is wildly popular.

In Morocco, the metal festival “Boulevard des jeunes musicians” attracts over 30,000 fans every year, to hear bands that, as recently as 2003, were arrested by the authorities for being “Satanists who recruited for an international cult of devil worship”.

In response, hundreds of NGO and human rights activists joined a rock/ metal concert on the steps of the Parliament a week after the musicians were arrested, organized under the slogan, “Rockers, Dockers, même combat! (same struggle).”

In Egypt, death metal virtuoso Al Sharif Hassan Marzeban neatly sums up the motivation of so many rock and hiphop musicians in Egypt and across the region, toiling under despotic regimes: “Despite the fact that the government is trying to fuck you, repress you, and control you—did you know that Egypt is like the twelfth most corrupt country in the world?—you have your fan base and you, not the government, are in control.”

In Palestine, there is a more well documented hip-hop scene centred in Ramallah, but also thriving in Gaza, that uses rhyme and music to challenge occupation.

In Lebanon, former-rock and current trip hop duo Soap Kills make songs so as to “break down the bonds of patriarchy and class bias” that pervade Arab (and global) society more broadly.

Levine finishes with these words of hope: “The fear, the violence, the hatred in the Middle East can seem deafening, but it’s still not loud enough to silence the voices of resistance”.

A generation after Twisted Sister’s 1984 smash hit, kids across the MENA are screaming, in English, Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Hebrew, Turkish and French— online, onstage, and however tentatively, on the streets—“‘We’re not gonna take it anymore.’”

“It’s a message that used to resonate with Americans and Europeans. The sooner we rejoin the chorus, the sooner real peace, democracy and reconciliation will be achieved—not just in the heartlands of the Muslim world, but in the heartlands of the West as well.”

n Douglas Adams’ novel Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox begins his climb to success by inventing glasses that automatically blind the wearer at the first sign of looming disaster. Naturally they are a bestseller.

Stephen Harper is the Zaphod Beeblebrox of Canadian politics.

I came to this realization after hearing Harper and his followers repeat the mantra: “This recession isn’t so bad.”

At first I thought this was just a political ploy, but now I’m convinced they are sincere. Misguided and dead wrong of course, but sincere. They’ve got their Beeblebrox glasses on.

In a major speech to the Canadian public, Harper put out his “glass half full” message. He cheered the fact that Canadian banks are not collapsing, and predicted the nation will experience a short economic contraction after which we will be ideally positioned to kick some global economic butt.

In the wake of his speech, a spokes Tory from his office stated: “The new message from [Harper] was there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

There he was, speaking to all the news organizations Canadians trust most–Fox News and CNN–trying not to brag about how good we have it compared to our neighbours and trading partners.

Recession

And there he was again, addressing us from the stage at the London G20 Summit, telling us that today’s recession isn’t as bad as past economic collapses. Hey, our ancestors lived in mud huts–how crappy was that?!

It seems that Harper prefers to address us from afar, so our nasty pessimism doesn’t rub off on him. Plus he gets to hang with likewise optimistic world leaders like Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, who suggested that homeless earthquake survivors in L’Aquila “should view it like a camping weekend.”

Harper and his team have stuck to their message despite being contradicted by just about every economist on the planet.

IMF beancounters point out that slumps in the economies that import our stuff will mean massive layoffs and severe economic contraction. Forget the quick recovery, they warn.

Harper and his Finance Minister Jim Flaherty just smile and insist the glass is half full.

So what if over a quarter of a million Canadians lost their jobs in the first two months of 2009 alone– think how many of us still have work. When you look at it that way, you can turn that frown upside down, Gloomy Gus. Then along comes Kevin Page, Parliamentary Budget Officer. Looking at the same economic data the Prime Minister’s Office is seeing, Page comes to a different conclusion. Our economy will experience severe contraction and the end is nowhere in sight, Page warns.

The post of Parliamentary

Budget Officer was created by the Harper Tories, and Page was appointed just a year ago. The idea was to have an independent, nonpartisan fiscal voice to advise the government of the day.

But what’s the point of having a non-partisan voice advise you if he doesn’t tell you what you want to hear?

This Mr. Page is the very one who spilled the beans late in the last election campaign, revealing that the real cost of our war in Afghanistan was about $10 billion higher than the Tories would admit.

And now he has the gall to tell Canadians to batten down the hatches, because we are all in for rough economic seas. Beeblebrox glasses or not, the Tories have had enough and they’re demanding some happy news from the hapless Page.

Alarmist

At a recent Commons finance committee meeting, Tory after Tory attacked Page for not telling them any “positive stuff”, and for scaring the public with “alarmist statements”.

Tory MP Ted Menzies, assistant to Finance Minister Jim Flarherty, tore into Page for using unnecessarily harsh language to describe economic conditions. Page had used the word “plunge” to describe a 15.3 per cent drop in gross domestic income in the last three months of 2008. What a party pooper!

Tory MP Mike Wallace passionately made the case for more economic happy talk: “I believe part of the issue facing Canada and the world is we need some of the positive stuff. And when the positive stuff does come out it tends to get discounted immediately.”

Put on the spot to come up with some “positive stuff”, Page responded that he’s pretty positive another 385,000 Canadians will lose their jobs by July, and that Stephen Harper’s budget projections will be swamped by record deficits as tax revenues dwindle.

Then the ungrateful Page had the nerve to point out that the Tories were starving his office by withholding a third of its meager budget, and refusing to hand over government spending documents. Well, who can blame them?

So let’s salute the Happy Harperites with a positively rousing rendition of a classic depression-era ditty; Irving Berlin could have had Stephen Harper in mind when he wrote it.

Just around the corner/ There’s a rainbow in the sky/ So let’s have another cup of coffee/And let’s have another piece of pie.

Trouble’s like a bubble/ And the clouds will soon roll by/So let’s have another cup of coffee/And let’s have another piece of pie.

Let a smile be your umbrella/For it’s just an April shower/Even John D. Rockefeller/Is looking for the silver lining!

Mr. Herbert Hoover [read Stephen Harper]/ Says that now’s the time to buy/So let’s have another cup of coffee/And let’s have another piece of pie!

14 April 2009 Socialist Worker 9

WHERE WE STAND

international socialist events

The dead-end of capitalism

TORONTO

The capitalist system is based on violence, oppression and brutal exploitation. It creates hunger beside plenty. It kills the earth itself with pollution and unsustainable extraction of natural resources. Capitalism leads to imperialism and war. Saving ourselves and the planet depends on finding an alternative.

The 1930s: Recession, resistance, revolution Tuesday, April 14, 7pm Speakers: Pam Johnson and Philip Murton OISE, 252 Bloor St W info: 416.972.6391

Socialism and workers’ power

Global crisis, global resistance— Marxism 2009

Any alternative to capitalism must involve replacing the system from the bottom up through radical collective action. Central to that struggle is the workplace, where capitalism reaps its profits off our backs.

Capitalist monopolies control the earth’s resources, but workers everywhere actually create the wealth. A new socialist society can only be constructed when workers collectively seize control of that wealth and plan its production and distribution to satisfy human needs, not corporate profits—to respect the environment, not pollute and destroy it.

May 29 to 31 Ryerson University Students’ Centre 55 Gould St info: 416.972.6391

OTTAWA

How can workers fight back in a recession?

Tuesday, April 21, 7:30pm Speakers: André Cornellier, Carolyn Egan and Heather Finn JK Wylie Boardroom, PSAC Building, 233 Gilmour info: gosocialists@yahoo.ca

Reform and revolution

Every day, there are battles between exploited and exploiter, oppressor and oppressed, to reform the system—to improve living conditions. These struggles are crucial in the fight for a new world. To further these struggles, we work within the trade unions and orient to building a rank and file movement that strengthens workers’ unity and solidarity.

But the fight for reforms will not, in itself, bring about fundamental social change. The present system cannot be fixed or reformed as NDP and many trade union leaders say. It has to be overthrown. That will require the mass action of workers themselves.

Elections and democracy

Elections can be an opportunity to give voice to the struggle for social change. But under capitalism, they can’t change the system. The structures of the present parliament, army, police and judiciary developed under capitalism and are designed to protect the ruling class against the workers. These structures cannot be simply taken over and used by the working class. The working class needs real democracy, and that requires an entirely different kind of state—a workers’ state based upon councils of workers’ delegates.

Internationalism

The struggle for socialism is part of a worldwide struggle. We campaign for solidarity with workers in other countries. We oppose everything which turns workers from one country against those from other countries.

We support all genuine national liberation movements.

The 1917 revolution in Russia was an inspiration for the oppressed everywhere. But it was defeated when workers’ revolutions elsewhere were defeated. A Stalinist counterrevolution which killed millions created a new form of capitalist exploitation based on state ownership and control. In Eastern Europe, China and other countries a similar system was later established by Stalinist, not socialist parties. We support the struggle of workers in these countries against both private and state capitalism.

Canada, Quebec, Aboriginal Peoples

Canada is not a “colony” of the United States, but an imperialist country in its own right that participates in the exploitation of much of the world. The Canadian state was founded through the repression of the Aboriginal peoples and the people of Quebec.

We support the struggles for self-determination of Quebec and Aboriginal peoples up to and including the right to independence.

Socialists in Quebec, and in all oppressed nations, work towards giving the struggle against national oppression an internationalist and working class content.

Oppression

Within capitalist society different groups suffer from specific forms of oppression. Attacks on oppressed groups are used to divide workers and weaken solidarity. We oppose racism and imperialism. We oppose all immigration controls. We support the right of people of colour and other oppressed groups to organize in their own defence. We are for real social, economic and political equality for women.

We are for an end to all forms of discrimination and homophobia against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people. We oppose discrimination on the basis of religion, ability and age.

The Revolutionary Party

To achieve socialism the leading activists in the working class have to be organized into a revolutionary socialist party. The party must be a party of action, and it must be democratic. We are an organization of activists committed to helping in the construction of such a party through ongoing activity in the mass organizations of the working class and in the daily struggles of workers and the oppressed.

If these ideas make sense to you, help us in this project, and join the International Socialists.

10 Socialist Worker 14 April 2009

peace & justice events ONTARIO-WIDE

Ontario’s ‘Green’ Energy Act a greenwash by michele mcauley On June 2, 2008 environmental groups gathered at Queen’s Park to call for a Green Energy Act and propose legislation similar to Germany’s, which employs over 230,000 people in a thriving renewable energy sector in wind and solar power.

Ontario’s Energy Minister George Smitherman went on a tour of Europe to look at the best energy models around the world. He admitted to “catching a flavour of the passion” for renewables from Hermann Scheer, the architect of Germany’s energy revolution and stated “work is underway in Ontario to take advantage of what Mother Nature has to offer… we are at just the beginning of this energy revolution.”

Nine months later, on February 23, Smitherman announced the arrival of his Green Energy Act. More of a greenwash than a green act, it relies on nuclear power to generate 50 per cent of energy generation in Ontario. The Act caps new renewable energy projects at 5,312 megawatts over the next 20 years to allow space for 14,000 megawatts of nuclear electricity.

Nuclear

The top three problems with nuclear—it’s dirty, dangerous and expen-

Vancouver landfill leaking poison The “experts” who designed the Chache Creek landfill, where Vancouver dumps its garbage, promised it would hold the toxic waste for 200 years. You can knock a zero off that.

Barely 20 years old, the waste site is leaking heavy metals, hydrocarbons and a toxic chemical soup into the surrounding water table. Nearby streams, wells and the Thompson River all contain dangerous levels of contamination.

Water sources for the Nlaka’pamux First Nation are compromised. Asked if he would drink the water, researcher Michael Easton replied: “If it was my personal drinking-water source, I wouldn’t be drinking it. I wouldn’t even be showering in it.”

The dump is expected to reach its capacity next year.

Discussions around Vancouver’s waste management are not about cleaning up the toxic time bomb, but about expanding it.

sive. It would cost trillions of dollars to build enough nuclear power stations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a conservatively acceptable level. Those same reactors would create tens of thousands of tons of lethal high-level radioactive waste and contribute to further proliferation of nuclear weapons materials.

Historically, delays, cost over-runs, poor performance and safety problems have plagued nuclear construction. Last May, construction on a new reactor built in France was halted because of quality-control issues and in Finland, a new plant’s construction was two years behind schedule and at least $2 billion over budget.

In Kincardine, Ontario, the Bruce nuclear refurbishment was experiencing $600 million in cost over-runs

by June of last year.

The threat of nuclear accidents is acknowledged by the nuclear industry itself. A Fenelon Falls, Ontario resident states “20 years ago I lived in Tiverton, Ontario, in the shadow of the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, and… a fact of life was having pamphlets delivered to our door telling us what to do in case of a nuclear emergency. At the time my children were just babies and it certainly snapped me into awareness.”

Epidemiological data from the Russian Academy of Sciences suggests that some 60,000 people have

died in Russia as a result of the Chernobyl disaster of April 26, 1986. Including the highly affected countries Ukraine and Belarus would take the total death toll to 200,000 (statistic as of the 20th anniversary of the disaster, April 26, 2006).

Wind power

By contrast, Germany has 20,000 megawatts of wind power and is shutting down nuclear reactors. In 2008 alone, it installed 1,500 megawatts of wind power. On March 16, DONG Energy signed an agreement to buy 500 offshore wind turbines from Siemens for use in offshore wind farms in Northern Europe. The turbines will generate 1,800 megawatts, the agreement is touted as one of the biggest orders in history and offshore wind is one of the fastest growing renewable energy technologies.

Why should Ontario, at three times the size of Germany and with more available, wind be any different?

Wind, solar and geothermal power would address some of the economic, jobs, environmental pollution and climate change crises.

We must demand renewables instead of nuclear and we can’t allow this moment to pass. If nuclear takes hold in Ontario, it will kill the budget for renewables along with the existing impetus to stop a nuclear renaissance in Canada.

Tories scrap environmental assessments The Harper Tories are using the economic crisis as an excuse to bring in a two-year moratorium on environmental assessments of projects where the feds are investing in infrastructure projects.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice says it is an exercise in cutting “red tape”.

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party said: “There’s a fullscale assault on the environment and they are using the economy as a cover.”

Prentice tried to justify the cuts by arguing the environmental review process will slow down building projects designed to improve the environment.

Although he didn’t mention it, that would include nuclear power plants, which the Tories tout as “clean” alternatives to fossil fuel

burning plants.

It could also apply to new projects in the Alberta tar sands, if federal funds are part of the investment.

In a recent op-ed piece in the Globe and Mail environmentalists Heather McLeod-Kilmurray and Nathalie Chalifour argue that, instead of chopping the environmental assessment process, we need to give it stronger powers.

They point to a recent environmental assessment of a proposed Imperial Oil project in the tar sands, which will produce carbon emissions equivalent to 800,000 new cars.

The assessment, jointly conducted by the federal and Alberta governments concluded the project would have “no significant environmental effects”.

Ontario fights back: cross-province protests to stop the cuts to our hospitals Saturday, April 18 info: www.nupge.ca or e-mail ohc@sympatico.ca

TORONTO

What’s wrong with our newspapers?

Friday, April 17, 7pm Speakers: Peter C. Newman, Linda McQuaig and Wayne MacPhail Koffler Auditorium 569 Spadina Cres $10 or PWYC info: events@rabble.ca Organized by Rabble.ca

Climate justice!

Climate action!

Seminar: Wednesday, April 22, 3pm Centre for Social Innovation, 215 Spadina Public Forum: Wednesday, April 22, 7pm Speakers: Tom Athanaiou and Dave Martin 25 Cecil St Organized by Climate Action Network, Greenpeace Canada and the Toronto Climate Campaign

May Day of action

Saturday, May 2, 1pm Sherbourne and Carleton Organized by No One Is Illegal

Solidarity in a time of crisis: stewards assembly

Thursday, May 7, 6:30pm Stewards, staff and leaders from all unions in Greater Toronto Sheraton Centre 123 Queen St W info: labourcouncil.ca Organized by the Toronto & York Region Labour Council

VANCOUVER

Oxfam Vancouver’s walk for climate justice

Saturday, April 18, 10:30am 750 Hornby St info: jeffg@volunteer.oxfam.ca

2010: the greenest Olympics ever?

Wednesday, April 22, 7pm Speaker: Chris Shaw 515 W Hastings $5-10 Organized by Rabble.ca

You can find the I.S. in: Toronto, Ottawa, Gatineau, Vancouver, Victoria, Montreal, London, St. Catharines, Mississauga, Scarborough, Halifax, Belleville & Kingston e: iscanada@on.aibn.com t: 416.924.9042 w: www.socialist.ca For more event listings, visit www.socialist.ca.

reports@socialist.ca ONTARIO ART GALLERY

FREE SPEECH

STUDENT ASSEMBLY

Students meet for anti-war conference in Toronto

Shortly after Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) director and CEO Matthew Teitelbaum began crying poor to the media, he made good on his vow to cut costs by laying off dozens of workers and hinted that further job losses could follow later this year.

While the 23 layoffs seem relatively small in comparison to recent job losses, this figure only includes full-time workers and fails to take into consideration the termination of 47 contract positions and part-time employees who lost their jobs but hold another parttime position at the AGO. In total, this round of job cuts affects nearly 15 per cent of the AGO workforce, nearly all of whom were members of OPSEU Local 535.

The move also comes just weeks after Teitelbaum told workers that the board would explore all available cost-cutting options as alternatives to layoffs.

A number of workers had offered to reduce their weekly hours to save the jobs of their co-workers, but the AGO never even considered bringing that option to the table, according to the Local 535 executive.

Though job losses at the AGO have been commonplace lately, many long-time workers and active members of the union—including former union president Marcie Lawrence— were among those targeted this time around, sparking accusations of ageism and union-busting in recent days.

Just days after the 23 full-time positions were eliminated, some were reposted on the AGO website as almost identical jobs with similar responsibilities, but on a part-time basis only and without vacation time or a benefits package.

Even more unsettling to the laid-off workers is the recent announcement by the Ontario Government to increase its annual funding to the gallery, which was announced one week before the layoffs occured.

ANTI-WAR Global protests greeted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) leaders as they gathered for the 60th anniversary summit.

Demonstrations were held across Europe and North America in opposition to the war in Afghanistan and against the NATO alliance.

In Canada, rallies were organized in 14 cities.

Speakers in Toronto raised the links between the war, attacks on freedom of expression, Islamophobia and the economic crisis.

In New York City, 10,000 people marched on Wall Street behind a banner “Beyond War: A new economy is possible” referencing a 1967 Martin Luther King speech “Beyond Vietnam”.

Against a backdrop of economic failure and recession, participants counter-posed the billions wasted on wars abroad with the desperate needs of communities struggling under growing unemployment and bankruptcies.

by OCTAVIAN cadabeschi

From March 20 to 22, Ryerson University was the host of the Student Assembly Against War and Racism, in which 200 students and activists attended from Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Newfoundland, and the US. Co-sponsored by the Canadian Federation of Students and the Canadian Peace Alliance, the primary focus of the conference was on educating students about the occupation of Afghanistan and the danger of Islamaphobia.

Galloway broadcast breaks ban Nearly 800 people packed Metropolitan United Church in downtown Toronto to hear a live broadcast of banned British MP George Galloway.

Galloway had been banned from entering Canada by Jason Kenney— since rebranded as “Minister of Censorship and Deportation”—over a week before he was due to arrive for a four-city speaking tour.

Kenney claimed that Galloway’s humanitarian aid convoy to Gaza represented “support for terrorism”, resulting in Galloway’s being deemed a “national security risk”.

In response to Kenney’s

ban, an angry backlash swept the country. Thousands of people phoned and e-mailed Kenney’s office in protest; free speech campaigners and anti-war activists staged pickets at Tory MPs’ offices; almost every major newspaper and magazine condemned the ban, citing free speech issues; and thousands more people showed support for the “Defend Free Speech” campaign, launched in response to Kenney’s attacks.

Unfortunately, a legal challenge to overturn the ban failed in federal court, although the judge recognized that there were problems with how Galloway had been kept out of the country. A judicial

review is pending.

Even though Galloway was unable to enter Canada, his tour went ahead anyway.

Organizers prepared a “Plan B” to make sure that Galloway could deliver his speech to each city where he had been scheduled to speak. On March 30 in Toronto, nearly 800 people attended the first “ban-busting broadcast”. On the same night, supporters in over 20 cities across the country organized simulcasts of Galloway’s speech, while hundreds more watched online.

On March 31, over 500 heard another broadcast in Mississauga. On April 1, over 350 heard him in Mont-

Workshops

real. And on April 2, nearly 600 heard his broadcast in Ottawa. Galloway delivered a live, original speech to each city.

His Toronto speech was posted online at www.mogulus.com/rabbletv. By the end of the week, tens of thousands of people had heard Galloway’s speech.

Kenney’s attempts to shut down a high-profile critic of the NATO-led war in Afghanistan and of Israel’s war on Gaza and the Palestinians have backfired spectacularly. Organizers anticipate that Galloway will shortly deliver another speech to audiences in Canada, but next time in person.

STRIKING NATIONAL STEEL CAR WORKERS FORCE CEO TO RESUME TALKS by keith newman

Hamilton-based National Steel Car Ltd. is back at the bargaining table with the union representing 660 of its striking workers after picketers detained CEO Greg Aziz at the company gates for nearly 45 minutes earlier this week. The tactic initiated an agreement between the two sides to resume talks.

Members of United Steelworkers Local 7135 walked off the job at 12:01 am on April 6 after voting al-

most unanimously against the company’s final contract proposal a day earlier, a response to yet another assault on unionized labour in Canada.

Strikers immediately began to build a shelter out of wooden skids and tarps, and set up barrels near the picket line in anticipation of an extended work stoppage.

Nearly 95 per cent of workers rejected the offer, which they called an “attack on manufacturing”.

PRO-CHOICE MOVEMENT

by Amelia murphy-beaudoin

Anti-choice campaigners claim to have stopped 421 abortions during the international “40 Days for Life Campaign”, which ran from February 25 to April 5 and took place in the US, Australia, Canada and Northern Ireland.

But in Toronto, they had no success. An anti-choice group kept vigil across the street from the Women’s Care Clinic, to draw attention to abortion through prayer and fasting.

On the first day of the campaign, four anti-choice campaigners prayed across the street from the clinic, while over 20 pro-choice advocates assured that any woman wanting to access the clinic could do so safely.

The anti-choice group did not stop a single woman from accessing the clinic,

The offer demanded employees accept concessions such as a 25 per cent cut in their total wage and benefit packages—estimated at $31 an hour—and to waive their seniority rights.

The plant’s remaining workers have already shortened their schedules to fourday workweeks as a way to help the company cut costs.

The union is seeking to lower the number of working hours required to earn pension credits now that employees have moved to

STEWARDS’ ASSEMBLY and the clinic did not report any interruption in service throughout the 40 days.

The anti-choice campaign maintained a low profile in Toronto, drawing little attention from the public.

Pro-choice advocates remained involved with assuring the safety and security of the clinic and its patients for the 40 days.

A positive working relationship developed with the Women’s Care Clinic where previously there had been no need for association between the clinic and pro-choice advocates such as Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics (OCAC).

The 40-day anti-choice campaign had one unintended outcome: it strengthened and broadened the pro-choice movement in Toronto.

When women’s rights are under attack, we stand up and fight back.

Continued from page 12.

The stewards’ assembly is a tremendous opportunity for rankand-file voices to be heard and connect across workplaces.

It is an opening for stewards’ networks to be set up and strategies exchanged. The first possibility of joint action is a mass rally to be called on June 13 against the job losses, for reform of EI and to counter the employers’ offensive There is a mixture of fear and anger in the working class today and we have to mobilize to turn that fear into militancy.

A militancy that sees the class divide that exists in our society and understands that workers collectively have the power to fight back and win.

A stewards’ assembly is an important step in organizing the base of our unions for that fightback. Every workplace activist and socialist must make an absolute priority of being there.

shorter workweeks. It is also looking for new language in the bargaining agreement that would see severances tripled if the Hamilton plant shuts down.

National Steel Car is Canada’s only manufacturer of new railroad freight cars, has laid off more than 1,700 workers at the Hamilton plant since 2006 in efforts to reduce costs and remain competitive in world markets. Some 760 workers are on temporary layoff.

While National Steel Car says it currently has no firm orders and the market outlook for steel remains poor, the company’s parent firm National Industries is building a $350-million manufacturing plant in Alabama.

The union has accused the company of seeking to transfer operations from Hamilton to the Alabama facility once it is completed.

Workshops also covered a broader range of topics including racism, civil liberties, counter-recruitment, the militarization of campus, First Nations struggles and global solidarity.

The assembly was very accessible: it was free to attend, offered free accommodation for out-of-own visitors, and though geared primarily towards students, non-student activists were welcomed to attend.

The evening discussion on Saturday drew parallels between the struggles against apartheid in Palestine, the Tamil liberation movement in Sri Lanka and the struggle against the war in Afghanistan.

Framed around the right to education for all, it was effective in drawing connections between these struggles and the interests of students internationally.

The smaller talks throughout the day were a focus for some highly political discussions. The assembly also featured a strategy session on the last day, which addressed the highlights of the conference and had a high energy, rally feel.

George Galloway

The reaction to the ban of British MP George Galloway was also felt throughout the assembly as anger against his ban by the government was brought up at a number of the discussions. Most of the attendees on the last day of the assembly went to an emergency city-wide planning meeting to deal with the ban immediately after the conference.

Overall, the pan-Canadian student anti-war network has grown stronger as a result of the conference.

Join the International Socialists Mail: P.O. Box 339, Station E, Toronto, ON M6H 4E3 E-mail: membership@socialist.ca / Tel: 416.972.6391

Name: Address: City/Province: Phone: E-mail:

14 April 2009 Socialist Worker 11

In Ottawa, London, Paris...

TAMIL PROTESTs DEMAND immediate CEASEFIRE by peter william

In early April, the Sri Lankan government declared that its decades-old war on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil-Elam (LTTE) was in its “final act”.

The Sri Lankan Army (SLA) has now begun using chemical weapons against Tamils.

In response, Tamils all over the world have organized international protests, including one in Ottawa that has attracted thousands of supporters. The Ottawa protest drew attention after disrupting traffic in the downtown core. Many of the participants have said they will not leave until the Canadian government acts to ease the suffering of the Tamil people.

Pio is a Tamil from Toronto who joined the Ottawa protest: “Canada has already played a part in the creation of the current humanitarian disaster. So it’s a Canadian responsibility to diffuse the disaster.”

The protest is set to continue indefinitely, in the hope that it will draw more attention to the issue and generate more support from the international community. Tens of thousands of Tamils remain trapped in socalled “safe-zones”; thousands have been slaughtered by Sri Lankan troops.

The Tamil National Alliance has reported that over 4,100 Tamils have been killed so far in 2009, while thousands more have been seriously injured.

Some activists have taken up hunger strikes to emphasize the severity and urgency of the situation. Protests are also continuing in cities around the world. Over 100,000 people marched in London, England on April 11.

Thaya Idaikkadar, a Tam-

il Labour councillor in northwest London, helped organize the demonstration. “We want politicians and the media to notice and wake up. Many people came out to protest over Gaza. Don’t forget people being killed in Sri Lanka. We are calling for a permanent ceasefire and a negotiated settlement for all people in Sri Lanka.”

In Ottawa, protesters have had to deal with the heavyhanded tactics of police, who have photographed and videotaped participants, and restricted their movement. Some have been assaulted, while those attempting to continue overnight demonstrations have had their tents confiscated.

The police have attempted to create a mood of intimidation, but participants are standing firm. Non-Tamil supporters have come from Ottawa campuses to join the demonstrations. Others have travelled from cities outside Ottawa to show their solidarity.

The ongoing protests— both in Ottawa and around the world—have thrown a spotlight on the acts of genocide committed by the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil people. The thousands who assembled on Parliament Hill and who blocked traffic in Ottawa have attracted more media attention, and have raised the level of awareness among the general public.

Pio added: “People are upset about disrupted commutes, but we Tamils are upset and in complete despair over the merciless slaughter of family and friends.”

For more information about the situation in Sri Lanka, visit www.tamilnet.com.

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All out for city-wide stewards’ assembly by carolyn egan The leaders of local unions in Toronto were recently called together by the Toronto and York Region Labour Council.

They discussed how to ramp up the fight back against the employers’ offensive and ongoing job losses, and to continue the pressure to improve Employment Insurance (EI) for the hundreds of thousands of laid-off workers.

A decision was made to call a mass stewards’ assembly on May 7. The last time this happened was in the Mike Harris era, and led to a general strike.

An organizing committee of both industrial and public sector unions has met and plans are underway.

Stewards are the backbone of the trade union movement. They are the rank-and-file activists in the workplace who fight every day for their fellow-workers.

They file grievances, defend members’ rights against the employer and know firsthand the conditions that are facing the ordinary worker.

They are elected from the

workplace floor and generally command the respect of those around them, and, are trusted to put workers issues first. They experience the same day-to-day conditions and in most instances have the confidence of their fellow workers.

It is this layer of workeractivists that are being asked to attend and connect with others like themselves from workplaces all over the city—in manufacturing plants, hospitals, government offices, building sites

and postal stations. This is an important step in bringing a focus and collective strategy to the myriad of workplaces across this city.

It is also a recognition by the elected local leadership of the labour council that a rank-and-file fightback is necessary if we are to push back the employers’ offensive. It comes after the Good Jobs for All Conference that brought out over 1,000 trade union and community activists and set out a course of action for an

equitable good jobs strategy, which would reach every layer of the diverse working class community in Toronto.

The working-class has to organize itself in a collective struggle. Union activists have been fighting back in their own workplaces and over their own issues. But more has to be done. There have been rallies throughout the city by laid-off workers demanding improvements in EI. Teachers held a mass rally of thousands against increased workload issues.

National Steelcar in Hamilton was just struck by 600 Steelworkers. The company was demanding 25 per cent concessions and other clawbacks.

Workers rejected the final offer by 95 per cent even though the company is threatening to close, and is opening up a new plant in Alabama. Over 2,000 rallied against the shutdown of US Steel. CAW members are fighting back against huge concessions demanded by the government and their employers.

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